IBM MQ vs TIBCO Enterprise Message Service comparison

IBM and TIBCO are both solutions in the Business Activity Monitoring category. IBM is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6, while TIBCO is ranked #2. IBM holds a 39.0% mindshare in BAM, compared to TIBCO’s 18.4% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of TIBCO users who would recommend it.

IBM MQ

Read 170 IBM MQ reviews

7,263 Views
654 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

TIBCO Enterprise Message Se...

Read 5 TIBCO Enterprise Message Service reviews

593 Views
350 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM MQ

TIBCO Enterprise Message Se...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM MQ and TIBCO Enterprise Message Service based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Business Activity Monitoring solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service

July 2025

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Helped 865,295 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

IBM MQ

Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring

1st

Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

170

Ranking in other categories

Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st)

TIBCO Enterprise Message Se...

Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring

2nd

Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Business Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 39.0%, down from 42.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Enterprise Message Service is 18.4%, down from 27.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Business Activity Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Md Al-Amin

Senior System Analyst at Thakral

Reliable and secure performance consistently enhances message transfer

IBM MQ is more reliable and secure than other software. There is a saying that for the last 30 years IBM MQ has never been hacked. It is more secure and reliable. Whenever the configuration is done, I do not have to touch it again. It works fine, it is stable, and its communication is to the point and accurate. All performance-related aspects are better. Performance-wise, it is scalable, and other features such as DR, DC, replication, and active passive mode are complex to configure, but it remains scalable. The pricing model for IBM MQ could be more flexible for clients.

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Ray Ochieng

Integration Lead at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

A value-for-money solution with the requisite features to facilitate efficient communication within an organization

We have been struggling with the stability of TIBCO Enterprise Message Service (EMS), but now I don't know how to differentiate whether the issues are caused by the infrastructure or the product itself. So, I am hesitant to provide a rating because I suspect that it might be due to my setup or environment. I really don't know how to evaluate the product independently. We have faced challenges with EMS, but I am unsure if it is related to infrastructure or the product itself. Even if I reach out for support, I am uncertain if the issue will be resolved since it could be partly related to the product. It's a tough situation.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The biggest advantage of IBM MQ is its reliability."

"Using a message queuing solution, we had a banking solution that integrated multiple branches and interbank systems. Different systems for credits, debits, CRM, and others communicated through this message queue solution. It wasn't just about communication; for instance, a CRM application needed to collect information from various banking systems, such as account balances, properties, contracts, and credit cards."

"I appreciate the level of control we have over queue managers, queues, and the messaging itself. That provides good security. So, the control and scalability of messaging are important to me."

"The usability of the solution is very good."

"Reliable integration between MQ servers is the most valuable feature."

"The first things are its simplicity and its robustness. Compared to any other product, it's the most robust I've worked with. And it's extremely easy to manage."

"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."

"It is very robust and very scalable."

More IBM MQ pros

"We have implanted the core middleware solution for the organization using this product and it is responsible for communication between different applications."

"The Enterprise Messaging Server will store the message and wait for other subscribers to come onto the network."

"The setup was done by TIBCO. It has been stable and has a server."

"I like TIBCO's ability to create versioned queues and persistent messages."

"The initial setup is straightforward and the product documentation is very good."

"TIBCO Enterprise Message Service's most valuable features are rapid zero-code integration and its large number of adapters and plugins."

"It allows us to achieve synchronous as well as asynchronous communication with the added advantage of making the communication reliable."

"It is very useful tool. It is also very easy to learn and implement."

Cons

"IBM could revamp the interface. The API is huge, but some developers find it limiting because of the cost. They tend to wrap the API course into the JMS, which means they're missing out on some good features. They should work a little bit on the API exposure."

"It could get a face lift with a modern marketing campaign."

"The solution should offer a freeware version, free vouchers, or certifications for learning purposes and building knowledge base."

"Scalability is lacking compared to the cloud native products coming into the market."

"We are looking at the latest version, and we hope that resilience, high availability, and monitoring will be improved. It can have some more improvements in the heterogeneous messaging feature. The current solution is on-premises, so good integration with public cloud messaging solutions would be useful."

"The initial setup is difficult. Creating your own cluster is difficult. Working with cluster repositories is difficult. Issue management with IBM MQ is difficult."

"The solution requires a lot of work to implement and maintain."

"The user interface should be enhanced to include more monitoring features and other metrics. The metrics should include not only those from the IBM MQ point of view but also CPU and memory utilization."

More IBM MQ cons

"An area for improvement would be integration with the API layer."

"Overall, my experience with the support team has been disappointing."

"Since all the communications goes through this product, it acts as a single point of failure."

"I would like to see better integration with Java and Apache Kafka."

"TIBCO also has its proprietary line of cloud-based applications, but specifically, these two products are not cloud compatible."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license for IBM MQ is commercial and not cheap. You get a multi-platform solution, which is important because it lets you connect systems on mainframes, personal solutions, Unix, Linux, etc."

"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

"IBM's licensing model seems more reasonable than some competitors. They charge based on usage, which is good."

"It would be a 10 out of 10 if it wasn't so expensive."

"IBM products, in general, have high licensing costs and support costs are too high."

"Use the new and lightweight version (Liberty) to lower licensing costs. It is also easier to upgrade/maintain."

"The price of the solution could be reduced, and we are on an annual subscription."

"It is a licensed product. As compared to an open-source solution, such as RabbitMQ, it is obviously costly. If you're using IBM Message Broker, which is a licensed product, IBM MQ is included in the same license. You don't have to pay separately for IBM MQ. The license cost of IBM MQ is lesser than IBM Message Broker."

More IBM MQ pricing and cost advice

"In our case, we didn't pay for each product separately. We simply paid for all those companies that provided the components."

"The cost of licensing is very high. One should go for the product only if they need to ensure message reliability and they cannot afford to lose messages."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

37%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

46%

Computer Software Company

11%

Transportation Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is MQ software?

Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...

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What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?

Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...

See all answers

How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?

IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...

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Comparisons

ActiveMQ vs IBM MQ

Compared 40% of the time

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform vs IBM MQ

Compared 9% of the time

Apache Kafka vs IBM MQ

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat AMQ vs IBM MQ

Compared 7% of the time

Software AG Universal Messaging vs IBM MQ

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM MQ Competitors

TIBCO FTL vs TIBCO Enterprise Message Service

Compared 27% of the time

Amazon SNS vs TIBCO Enterprise Message Service

Compared 14% of the time

More TIBCO Enterprise Message Service Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ

August 2025

Download IBM MQ product report

Buyer's Guide

Business Activity Monitoring

August 2025

Download TIBCO Enterprise Message Service product report

Also Known As

WebSphere MQ

Enterprise Message Service

Overview

IBM MQ is a middleware product used to send or exchange messages across multiple platforms, including applications, systems, files, and services via MQs (messaging queues). This solution helps simplify the creation of business applications, and also makes them easier to maintain. IBM MQ is security-rich, has high performance, and provides a universal messaging backbone with robust connectivity. In addition, it also integrates easily with existing IT assets by using an SOA (service oriented architecture).

IBM MQ can be deployed:

On-premises
In the cloud
Hybrid cloud

IBM MQ supports the following APIs:

MQI (Message Queue Interface)
REST
.NET
MQTT
JMS
IBM MQ Light

IBM MQ Features

Some of the most powerful IBM MQ features include:

High availability
Stability and scalability
Flexible deployment options
Uniform clusters
Automated and intelligent workload balancing
Broad language, API, and messaging protocol support
Administrative features that simplify messaging management
Open standards development tools
Simple management tools

IBM MQ Benefits

Some of the benefits of using IBM MQ include:

Multi-style messaging: IBM MQ supports simple multi-style messaging, making it easy to connect diverse systems with support for message queuing, transactions, and more.
Reduced risk: With IBM MQ you will never lose a message, and messages are never delivered more than once.
Cloud-native: Because IBM MQ has a minimal infrastructure, it is suitable to be cloud-native, and therefore has the capability to always remain on.
Available anywhere: Using IBM MQ, you have access to secure messaging anywhere, at any time.
Secure: IBM MQ makes sure to keep your data safe by using TLS secured communications, providing access identity management, message-level security, and more measures to protect your information.
Easy for application programmers: To use IBM MQ, application programmers do not need to have any knowledge of communications programming.
Technical support: IBM MQ has a large user community and also provides support 24/7 as needed.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by IBM MQ users who are currently using the solution.

PeerSpot user Sunil S., a manager at a financial services firm, explains that they never lose messages are never lost in transit, mentioning that he can store messages and forward them as required: "Whenever payments are happening, such as incoming payments to the bank, we need to notify the customer. With MQ we can actually do that asynchronously. We don't want to notify the customer for each and every payment but, rather, more like once a day. That kind of thing can be enabled with the help of MQ."

Another PeerSpot reviewer, Luis L. who is a solutions director at Thesys Technologies, says that IBM MQ is a valuable solution and is "A stable and reliable software that offers good integration between different systems."

The head of operations at a financial services firm notes that "I have found the solution to be very robust. It has a strong reputation, is easy to use, simple to configure in our enterprise software, and supports all the protocols that we use."

In addition, a Software Engineer at a financial services firm praises the security benefits of it and states that “it has the most security features I've seen in a communication solution. Security is the most important thing for our purposes."

IBM

TIBCO Enterprise Message Service is a standards-based messaging solution that can serve as the backbone of an SOA by providing Java Message Service (JMS) compliant communications across a wide range of platforms and application technologies.

TIBCO

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation

BNL, SunGard, TUI Group, UTi Worldwide, Yellow Pages Group

Buyer's Guide

IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service

July 2025

Free Report: IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service

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